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Camp NaNo EdMo

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
My WIP is in fairly good shape. It's about 100k with maybe 40k more to write and probably nearly as much to excise. I have a pretty good outline. I know which scenes need to be written, which are well polished, and a pretty good idea about where the rest stand. There is certainly enough to keep me busy for April.

So, this NaNo exercise is not about writing my novel, it's about rewriting it / finishing it. Has anyone here used NaNo for this? If so, how did you approach it? Here's my plan.

I have a number of scenes that have only outline notes. I'm treating these just as I would any new writing.

I have a number of scenes that need major revisions. I don't know if I'm going to try to revise or if I'm just going to set them aside and rewrite them from scratch.

Then I have the scenes that are too close to abandon but still need work. I'm going to do that work and for the word count I'm going to count the whole scene.

In short, I'm counting every completed scene, regardless of its starting point, on the grounds that done is done and not done ain't.

I've made a schedule. This scene on these two days, that scene on the next two days. If the first one isn't done, I let it go, unless I really feel I'm rolling.

I'd be interested to hear from other folks who have wrestled the Revision Demon.
 

Ruby

Auror
Hi skip.knox,

The beauty of Camp Nano is that, unlike the main November Nanowrimo, you don't have to write 50,000 words or even start a new novel. You can set yourself a lower word count or indeed a much higher one, and use the time to edit a previous work.

I'm already in a cabin with folks I met at previous camps, otherwise I'd have joined your cabin, but you can even ask not to be in a cabin at all. I think the maximum number is 11 in a cabin.

There's a message board in the cabin so it's a bit like a chat room. Some of us contribute more than others but it's very sociable and literary.

Your schedule seems okay. Only you know what's realistic. I've set a goal of 20,000 words and hope to write more than that. Like you, I'm continuing and revising an existing WIP or three!

I think the real writing "fun" happens during the revision stage. :)
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
I did exactly that. My thoughts are if you're hemming-and-hawing over word choice, it takes longer than plugging any old thing in there. When I edit, I count the whole word count because I've run tests, writing from my head and editing, and they both take the same amount of time in hours to achieve the same approximate word count.
 
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